Small Systems and Big Iron: Linux on Non-x86 Computers

The PowerPC architecture was jointly developed by IBM and Motorola around
1990 and is used on a very wide range of devices. All three current
major game consoles use PowerPC-based processors, as do many routers, onboard
computers in cars and aircraft, and high-end servers from IBM. Although
PowerPC largely has faded from desktop computers since Apple switched to
Intel x86 in 2006, use of the processor for embedded and server purposes
remains a multibillion-dollar industry.

During the peak of PowerPC desktop usage, most Linux distributions offered
builds for the architecture. Sadly, this is no longer the case. Novell and
Red Hat both offer Enterprise Server distributions for Power, but they aren't
cheap and really are designed only for current IBM servers. Although their
distributions are mature and well supported, most consumer PPC/Power hardware
actually consists of older Macs and the EFIKA line of computers from Genesi.
For these systems, the Enterprise Server distributions of SUSE and Red Hat
Linux aren't really optimal. Thankfully, the Linux community still provides
quite a bit of support for this architecture, largely due to the significant
amount of inexpensive PPC hardware from before Apple's switch to Intel.
The Sony PlayStation 3 also has provided the Linux community with inexpensive,
but powerful hardware. Its main limitation is the fact that it has only 256MB of RAM.

Historically, one of the primary Linux distributions for PowerPC was
Yellow Dog Linux. YDL is based on Red Hat Linux and uses RPM to manage
packages. Its hardware support is generally quite good. The distribution
runs on PowerPC Macs, IBM servers and workstations, and the PlayStation 3.
YDL has some fairly significant differences from other distributions,
such as using Enlightenment 17 as the default desktop environment. E17
offers quite a few advantages over both Enlightenment 16 and conventional
desktop environments. It's far lighter on resource consumption than
KDE, GNOME or Xfce, while offering a much larger feature set than most
low-footprint window managers. Almost every element of the user interface
is customizable with graphical tools and plugins. E17 also includes a
built-in file manager, unlike previous versions. However, E17 still
is under heavy development and may not be as stable as mature versions of
GNOME or KDE. For users who prefer them, Yellow Dog also has packages
for other desktop environments and window managers.

Figure 2. Enlightenment Desktop (E17)

Fedora also offers up-to-date PowerPC ISOs of every version,
including the latest, Fedora 12. Fedora offers a more complete default
installation and more application packages, but also is considerably
more resource-intensive. It attempts to give a GNOME or KDE environment
comparable to the x86 build of the same version. This means
if you're used to Linux systems on x86, you'll be more at home with
Fedora than with Yellow Dog, but it also means it's noticeably sluggish on
older systems. Generally, I'd recommend Fedora for systems with a 1GHz
or faster G4 or G5, and at least 512MB of RAM. It is important to note
that support for Fedora on the PlayStation 3 is experimental and in a
very early development stage, although there have been efforts to finish
the port. Fedora 12 will be the last officially supported version for
PowerPC, but there are efforts to provide community-supported PowerPC
builds of Fedora 13 and later versions.

Ubuntu ended official support for PowerPC in late 2006 with Ubuntu
6.10. Since then, there have been PPC builds of every Ubuntu release
developed by the community. These generally are very high quality and
have excellent stability. Ubuntu has similar system requirements
to Fedora, with most older hardware probably being too slow to handle
it smoothly. Ubuntu also offers an ISO for the PlayStation 3, but
it's still experimental and somewhat limited in features due to the
PS3's insufficient amount of RAM, so using the live CD is likely to
be unpleasant.

Itanium

Itanium, also called IA64, was the last attempt by Intel to replace
the aging x86 architecture, following the disappointing iAPX432 and
i860 processors in the 1980s and 1990s. At one time, industry analysts
considered it to be the future of the high-end servers, and Intel planned
to use the architecture in personal computers eventually as well. Itanium
uses a unique architecture, neither RISC nor CISC, that can execute
several instructions per cycle in parallel. SGI and HP replaced their
own high-end processors with Itanium out of the expectation that it
would bring a revolution in performance. However, the first-generation
Itanium core, code-named Merced, delivered disappointing performance
results while consuming massive amounts of power and prevented the
market-share breakthrough that Intel had hoped for.

With the release of
the Itanium 2 core in late 2002, performance increased significantly,
but the platform's reputation had been hurt by the low quality
of the first-generation processors, and Itanium remains a high-end
product with low market share. Intel still claims to be committed to
the architecture. A new quad-core Itanium chip, code-named Tukwila,
was released in February 2010, and according to Intel, at least two more
generations are under development.

HP is the last major manufacturer of
Itanium-based workstations, and it still makes more Itanium servers than
all other companies combined. HP's workstations, the ZX2000 and ZX6000,
are easily available secondhand and have excellent Linux support.

The only remaining commercial distribution with any focus on Itanium
is SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Red Hat offers a version of Red Hat
Enterprise Linux for Itanium, but support for the platform will be ended
in version 6. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 will be maintained and receive bug fixes until 2014,
so if you don't mind missing out on feature updates, you can purchase a
license from Red Hat. Red Hat also offers a free trial version, which blocks
access to update repositories after 30 days.

If you have a large Itanium
system or cluster, SUSE Linux makes a lot of sense due to its active
development status and excellent support for virtualization, but for
smaller installations and hobbyists, several other systems are available, including Gentoo and Debian. Fedora and Ubuntu both define
Itanium as a secondary platform and occasionally provide new releases
or updates, but both largely have ignored the architecture in recent
releases. The last build of Fedora available for Itanium was Fedora 9,
and Ubuntu releases for the platform have been broken or seriously buggy
since 8.04. HP-UX, OpenVMS and Microsoft Windows also are available
for Itanium.

Debian probably is the most stable and modern IA64 Linux distribution
available for free. It still is an officially supported Debian platform,
and still is under active development. It offers all the features
of x86 Debian, including a full GNOME desktop environment. Debian for
Itanium has access to the full Debian package set and generally
is fairly stable. In recent months, development has declined somewhat due
to declining overall interest in the Itanium platform, but it appears
that IA64 will continue to be a supported platform for the foreseeable
future. An occasionally active mailing list exists for users and
developers of the Itanium port of Debian.

Red Hat and its derivatives occasionally have run on Itanium. Red
Hat is preparing to release Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5, which will
support the platform natively, but it might not be a good idea to run
RHEL on a new Itanium system due to the fact that version 5 will be the
last release available for IA64. CentOS, an open-source clone of RHEL,
no longer supports Itanium, although the developers have suggested that
future releases may run on it, as well as other less-common architectures
including SPARC and Alpha. Fedora was available for Itanium through
version 9, and some RPMs from version 10 are available. Overall,
the Fedora experience on Itanium isn't bad with all updates installed,
but users who want more up-to-date packages may end up needing to use
source RPMs or compiling software themselves.

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